were going to find out what was going on there.
‘What have you got, Tosh?’ Jack asked as Ianto put a coffee mug in his hand.
Toshiko referred to the notes from her computer research that morning. ‘SkyPoint is built on the site of old dock warehousing. I’ve gone back as far as I can, but there are no records of Rift activity in the location. So no historical precedent for what seems to be happening there now.’
‘And no records of disappearances?’ Jack asked.
‘Not specific to that site. Not that I can see.’
‘So this is something to do with the building itself,’ Owen pondered as he watched Ianto hand the coffees around. He remembered that Ianto made good coffee – better than the shit they stung you more than two quid for down at Constantine’s, anyway, he guessed.
‘So there’s – what? – some creature living in there?’ Ianto suggested as he sat down at the table and took the first sip of Java. It was good. Of course it was.
‘Something that consumes people? Doesn’t leave a trace of them behind?’ Owen heard what he was saying and worried. If the thing in SkyPoint was the same thing that he had seen butcher the French philosophy student and then clean up afterwards better than those two old birds in rubber gloves on the telly – then he had to come clean to the rest of the team.
But Gwen didn’t think that was it. ‘There wasn’t time. Rhys and me, we were only seconds behind Brian Shaw when he walked into the bathroom. If it was some sort of creature, we would have heard something. No way that we wouldn’t.’
‘And we didn’t hear anything like a creature when the security guy disappeared, either,’ said Toshiko.
Jack pushed back his chair and started to prowl around the table. ‘So what happened? They didn’t get beamed up by Mr Scott. And, as far as our instruments can tell, there’s no Rift activity, so they didn’t just get sucked out of existence.’
Gwen shook her head. ‘But it has to be the Rift.’
Jack came to a stop; he’d done a full turn of the table and was back behind his own chair. He put his fists on his hips.
‘There’s only one way we’re going to find out,’ he said. ‘Who wants to play Happy Families?’
NINE
Owen was standing at the window of his new apartment looking across the Bay. The open-plan SkyPoint living area was filled with unopened boxes. There was no urgency in opening them – most had just been packed with old books to perfect the illusion of a couple moving into their new home.
This was going to be very weird, he thought, and looked out across the water wondering just how the hell he was going to get through this.
‘Well, that’s me all moved in.’
Owen turned from the window as Toshiko walked in from the bedroom. She was dressed in jeans and a thin sweater that clung to her tightly. She had her hair tied back in a ponytail. Owen guessed that this was what she looked like on a day off and realised with surprise that he had never actually seen Toshiko on a day off. She looked like a woman would the day she moved into her new apartment. She looked good. But that wasn’t going to make any of this anything like easier.
‘It’s a walk-in wardrobe,’ she told him. ‘I hung all my stuff on the right. You can have the left.’
‘No problem,’ Owen said. ‘I dress on the left, anyway.’ Toshiko didn’t look like she got the joke.
‘I’ll hang my stuff up later,’ he said. ‘Want a coffee?’
‘Great,’ she said. Her eyes sparkled.
Owen crossed into the kitchen area and filled the kettle, then took a mug from the box of kitchen things that Ianto had put together for them. The mugs were stylish, tall and slim with silver rims. Very Ianto. Back in Owen’s apartment, the mugs he drank from (
He set one mug down on the work surface and set about working out the high-tech coffee machine that came with the kitchen. Ianto had packed them a full dinner service – the works, in fact – but they were never going to be setting more than one place for dinner here. Owen guessed it would save on the washing up. Six plates, six sets of cutlery – with luck he would be out of SkyPoint before the dishwasher was half full.
He got the coffee machine working and suddenly the apartment was filled with music. Jazz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Owen looked across the room and saw Toshiko at the apartment’s sound system. Music seemed to pour out of every corner of the apartment.
She was swaying with the rhythm of ‘Love For Sale’, and caught Owen watching her. Suddenly self-conscious she smiled and turned the music down a little.
‘I’m sorry. Do you mind?’ she asked.
Owen shrugged and couldn’t help smiling. ‘I didn’t know you liked jazz.’
‘My mother’s a big fan. It used to be on all the time when I was growing up.’
‘Same here. I used to think it was the only thing that stopped my folks going for each other with the kitchen knives. “Take Five” would chill them out better than a case of red.’
‘Sorry. If it brings back memories…’ She moved to turn it off.
‘No. I like it. Like you said, it rubs off on you.’
Toshiko shook her head. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? We spend all that time with each other and we go through all this stuff – but we know next to nothing about everyone else.’
Owen stiffened. ‘Yeah, well maybe it’s better that way.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You know what it’s like, Tosh. No one gets to retire from Torchwood. And it isn’t worth taking out a pension plan.’
She knew what he was talking about. She had gone back through the Torchwood records once. No one had ever left the organisation for another job, or to start a family, or to go live in a cottage by the sea. Personnel files all closed with the same word: DECEASED.
But Toshiko didn’t want to think about that. She forced a smile. ‘You’re a bundle of joy today.’
Owen fought down the urge to tell her that he didn’t get the opportunity for much joy these days. He wondered whether he should also remind her that they were at SkyPoint to do a job, and that they were not there playing House.
Owen’s heart may have stopped beating; it didn’t mean he didn’t have one any more.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
And he was sorry. If he hadn’t been dead, playing man and wife with Toshiko for a couple of nights could have been fun. He was also sorry because he liked Toshiko (strangely he had grown to like her so much more since there had been no chance of – and no point in – bedding her) and he knew that a big part of her was looking forward to their stay here. She had feelings for him that he could never return, and she knew that, but this SkyPoint job was the closest she was ever going to get to playing husband and wife – probably, with anyone.
This was her dream job, he thought. It would have made his stomach turn over, had it still been able to.
He should tell her now, he thought, that this was a mission – that they had a job to do – and anything else going on inside her head was just pure fantasy, and she should quit it right now. The trouble was, he didn’t have the heart to do that. How could he do that to a woman that loved him even though he was a walking corpse.
Christ, he hoped they could clear this business up fast.
The doorbell went.
They looked at each other. They had agreed that Jack and the others should stay away while Owen and Toshiko got settled in at SkyPoint. No one else knew they were there.
